Help needed with icon art

Hey all. I thought about getting into making icon art and was wondering if anyone here had any tutorials they could point me to or tips regarding preferred methods for making said art, etc. Way back when Torchlight came out, I remember these being really popular viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6710

I'd really appreciate any info you folks could give me.

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ill give you some tips tho
but. i don't know what program you use to create your artwork, for me i use photoshop
so most of this stuff will be about that program, other image editing programs have very similar functions to photoshop(just in different areas with different names)

- 64x64 is the usual size you need to fit an icon into an iconset but..
this size is hard to work in so double or triple your canvas, you can access the image size option by going into image>image size and changing your image size to a certain amount, tick the constrain proportions box to keep your image as a square, it also saves you time since you only have to change either the height or width, i generally edit only the pixel dimensions and select a percent value using the dropout's on the width and height boxes, after your done with your art you can re-size it back into 64 x 64

-organize your file by putting layers into folders and labeling them with your icon/skill name, it saves time, since you dont have a to make a new file for every icon
when you save out files jut use the save as. function,make sure only the folder you select is visible and save them as .jpegs or another high quality image extension(.png) then rename your file, to get a single flat image

-photoshop needs an extension to save out .dds files, just google it up and you'll find it

-when making your iconset make sure you set up a grid(there are various tutorials into making grids for photoshop)
make sure the squares on each grid is 64 x 64(and on a new layer) then line it up with the 512 x 512 dimensions.
you can then just drag and drop in your 64 x 64 icons and line them all up
then save out your iconset as a .png or .dds(depending on how you want to implement your icons into GUTS)

- when you start painting icons always use a black background, and work in your light, if you want a really movement heavy image you would want to flesh out the lighting 1st before getting into any sort of foreshortening or using some extreme angle for your drawing.

anyways that's all i can gather/ bother to write of the top of my head
hope it helps

with such a small space to work with you REALLY don't want to come out with anything too involved (too many small details, too many colors etc.). Working on a big canvas that you scale down later as pointed out by Twinkletoes is a great technique, but it can fool you into thinking all that detail you're working on is gonna come out fine in the final smaller scale :P .